Dowdell edited the in-game version of Princess Zelda to look like Natalie, turned the “Triforce tile to a ring tile”, added in the “Natalie, will you marry me?” text at the end, and much more. He also had a custom engagement ring made at Takayas Custom Jewelry in Los Angeles to match the geeky Legend of Zelda theme. The best part of the story is that Natalie said “yes.” Her exact words were, “Of course, stupid.”

A highlight of our lives is getting together on the couch for play throughs of video games. The Legend of Zelda for NES is my all time favorite game. I got this ingenious little plan a few months back; I would schedule a play through with her, on original hardware, but have the game ask her to marry me when we beat it together.

I had pulled out my treasured original LoZ cartridge and made sure she saw it in there the night before.

But it was a trick. When she wasn’t looking (she was actually napping 4 feet from the console, talk about nerve-wracking) I swapped the cart for a freshly purchased EverDrive that I had loaded my rom hack onto. I had originally planned to get another original cart and flash the EEPROM; but I didn’t trust myself to pull it off right, time was now very limited; and while the masters online who specialize in this were willing to help there just wasn’t enough time to get them involved. The EverDrive was overnighted and worked fine for my purpose. (read more)